The Dark Side of the Moon
by altairattorney
Summary: There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact it's all dark. — A collection of Portal one-shots, inspired by Pink Floyd's concept album.
1. Speak to Me

**The Dark Side of the Moon  
**_A Portal one-shot collection_

I.  
Speak to Me

_I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us… very hard to explain why you're mad, even if you're not mad._

All over the concrete wasteland, they tuned on one cadence.

It was the beating of their hearts, and the pulse of their fear — it tied the same string of destiny, trapping their feet and hands. It was a sound belonging to memories of a life that would no longer be,

the cascade of their laughter,

the daily tinkling of their coins,

the words whispered by a sanity that would soon be lost.

There was a world painted beyond Aperture, and it was slowly losing its pace to the loneliness. Geometry took over the memories, glimpses of faces and warmth, to repeat itself in its minds — it drew endless rows of the same image, of the same chambers, buttons and cubes.

They tested, no longer aware of touch and smell. They tried again, and fell on the floors like broken glass. Running on was their only option — until they'd collapse under the weight of their bodies, and the white light would overflow with colours.

She did not care about them. She recorded, studied, undid the fabric of Science with each figure.

It was a game of smoke and mirrors, and they were parallels — parted identities, bound to never say a word again. 

* * *

Alongside _Rejected_, my ongoing project, I am hopeful and proud as I introduce my new one-shot collection.

Forty-one years have passed since British group Pink Floyd released their intense concept album, one destined to enter history due to its strong musical innovations and its thought-provoking themes. Unique in more than one way, _The Dark Side of the Moon_ sets a dense atmosphere of reflections and feelings, exploiting its artistic potential with the most diverse and experimental ways.

While Pink Floyd music doesn't exactly meet my taste, the various and artful suggestions of this album have a very strong effect on me. They help me focus and relax, but also stimulate my thoughts and my emotions. But it was mostly the lyrics, incisive, deep and in perfect harmony with the tone of the album, to convince me; the eerie and alienating atmosphere of the _Portal_ games fits in seamlessly, and joining the two was the perfect chance to test my own creativity.

Thank you, and enjoy!


	2. Breathe

II.  
Breathe

_Long you live and high you fly  
But only if you ride the tide  
Balanced on the biggest wave  
You race towards an early grave_

Although she knows there is no escape, her guts don't stop reminding her.

In the very last moments, Caroline's body matters in its own way. The pulse of her organs, on the verge of silence, grows into a restless concert; the vibrations mingle with her ears, as her heartbeat is amplified by the great embrace of her fear.

Soft but steady it flows, and she knows no means to stop it; she just lets it run freely, with everything else, in the dormant path between acceptance and resignation. In any case, it is time for her to die — nothing she has the power to change, not anymore.

She pays attention to her ribcage, to the way it rises and falls. Here, in the cold hospital bed, there is a mesmerizing rhythm to its tune — she clings to it, and to her heartbeat, like painful reminders.

It is too late, now, to value what she never cared for enough.

As they lead her away, she finds it hard to soothe the flow of memories. Within the terrible urge to survive, she relives fragments of the past; they touch her mind with burning fingers, torn to pieces by her lungs. Out, and she has hope for her future — in, she is young and broken already — out, she is too old and tired to fight back once more.

The last thought stays, in its cruelty, even after the doors are locked and she is the one element that parts them from their experiment. She gave it all for these people, hidden behind icy masks — even in her caution, in between all her calculations, she never valued her life enough to be saved. It was true, in the end — what had made her had broken her, and taken away her sight.

Her dying body tells her, louder than usual, as in a last battle cry. But she is tied to her death bed, and there is nothing left beyond her regret.

The injection calms her lungs, step after step. She recalls her smile, with the bright glance she used to show them. Those were good times — she was in control, she was unaware.

In the brilliance of that memory, she stops listening to her breath.


	3. On the Run

III.  
On the Run

_Live for today, gone tomorrow, that's me._

He is flying on his feet, right to the mouth of darkness.

No matter how impossible it looks — escape is the only option he can conceive, the one force left to keep his blood flowing and his ribcage from shattering. In the green ashes of this smoke, living on becomes a need superior to his own will; the call of survival guides him far, echoing from the inner building.

He knows that, unless his mind stays clear, there is no alternative to death. The sound of this place has grown too broken to bear; louder, frantic, it melts his thoughts in countless loose words.

There are but three things he can hold on to — his steps, his breath, and the fact they must go on.

His shoes fall regular against the concrete. He keeps the rhythm close, to fight against the blur in his ears; he erases the mixture of screams, ignores the bodies thudding to the floor in dozens. Cutting through unfamiliar areas starts feeling like an habit; it grows on him like an instinct, prelude to many and many days to come.

He used to loathe the red lights, the holes and the precipices that lead to nowhere. They reminded him of Aperture, of truths he had never imagined until it was too late to withdraw — they whispered daily to his sensitive ears, speaking of things he had always struggled to ignore.

But now — now that he can barely see, and the faint light from the vents is the only guide — he is naturally drawn to the source of that truth; the maintenance areas, drowned in pale lights and black oceans, turn into the last beacon of safety he can hope for.

He withdraws without hesitation, seeking refuge in the inky bowels of the earth. He knew before anyone else, and he is the last to get saved — for the truths he had always foreseen, right beneath the surface, were bound to surface and swallow all of them since the beginning.

Deeper he goes, and danger pours from the AI chamber; danger rains from the sky, and springs from beneath. On the surface of the world, grey helicopters are falling to meet their end, while beasts never seen before bring along dozens of people in their death.

In the tunnels of Aperture, he quivers in a different rathole each day. Little does he know that his, far above, is the fate of the luckiest — and the days of the apocalypse, on a much larger scale, have just begun.


	4. Time

IV.  
Time

_And then one day you find  
ten years have got behind you_  
_No one told you when to run_  
_you missed the starting gun_

He is awake the middle of the night, and he cannot decide what is stealing his sleep — the restless cough that breaks him in half, or the sound, cold and mechanical, of the passing time.

The ticking of the clock falls like stones in the water. It drowns out all the traces of the present; it moves regularly, with a voice too inevitable to ignore.

Time reminds him of many other things. It makes life a stranger, and the infinite palpable — it uncovers all that is there, alive and breathing, but impossible to stop. Hidden by the dark, the hands move on the wall; the dance of the hours, uncaring, is eternally just out of his reach.

And Cave Johnson is not fond of what he cannot control.

He always was a a man of action, almost of no words; he is not one to linger on the past, especially when there is a future to build. But as time moves forward, memory tends to go in the opposite direction — the walk of both is slow, and one that does not know forgiveness.

He cannot help remembering, as death combs his hair and whispers in his ears. As much as he tries to resist — its honey voice is a poison, he knows, so much deadlier than moon rocks — he has to listen, and then —

— then he is a teenager, alone in the rays of the afternoon sun. A courtyard bright and dusty, lost in the suburbs of a miserable town, is the ground he has won with his fiendish eyes; he kicks rocks and fragments of concrete, wishing to tear down those walls, to slice open the town and make room for a spirit too big to fit in that square of yellow earth —

— he is a powerful man, maker and owner he most successful lot of laboratories in the States; he builds an empire not on the feeling of accomplishment, but on the eternal pursuit to achieve even more. He destroys each obstacle with the same carelessness, for he is just as brilliant as he is foolish —

— and he loses control of the human wave, as his company slowly turns into something else entirely. He refuses to believe it, but he no longer succeeds; he is assaulted by too many signs, piled on countless years of mistakes he had always managed to miss. Stranger realities, stranger employees, reminding him that people are the mystery he never even tried to solve.

And it seems to him that Aperture, just like everything he has ever tried to do, shares his soul and his story. Everything stood on genius, on brainwaves that came and faded like lightning — everything was poisoned slowly, to accompany his own body in its decay.

Too late he sees what he has left behind; too much to take it back, to hold it all in his hands once more. He sees it, and he can't even start counting — but now, in between many dying nights, there is no longer room for understanding. He is old, and lost to the moon.

When the clock strikes dawn, all his thoughts have shifted on her.


	5. The Great Gig in the Sky

V.  
The Great Gig in the Sky

_If you can hear this whispering, you are dying._

Hers was the awakening that comes after a long sleep.

Everything was muffled and blurred, and the continuity of her thoughts kept breaking. A something she could not identify crept among her small, few ideas; it scrambled them in a suspension that knew no past and no present, and couldn't look forward to any future.

What she found herself in was a stasis, a numb forever in which she could bask eternally. Yet, not everything had clicked back into place — a nagging feeling made her mind dizzy, as if it were upside-down.

There was an inner contradiction in that, and yet she could not ignore it; there had been something _before_, something other than the timeless state of being she was in.

However, as soon as she managed to fully process the thought, a component in her mind rebelled. A fierce erasure took place, in the remotest depths of her coding — she made herself forget, and tore her own grasp on whatever that distant past could be.

The cycle repeated itself, in the one part of her mind she was unaware of. Whenever she tried to realize, the backlash was too strong for her to bear; she forgot, and moved on.

It happened for years, over and over. Until she died again, she never knew.

And then, in the monotonous horror of reliving her murder for years, she felt the echo of her first death — she felt the rage, the disappointment, the unearthly pain of lungs that empty and a heart that stops beating.

But no death in the world could compare to what she had felt twice — the curse of doing nothing, and being unable to even try.

Helplessness had killed her once, stone cold on a hospital bed; helplessness was her present, made of more and more two minutes full of the same subject, the same gun, the same horror.

And her voice rebelled, rising in screams and untied notes not a soul could hear — the air of her decaying chamber stayed still, untouched, laying dust on her dormant speakers.

She sang for ages, wrapping her song around the obsessive images of her murder. She unleashed her voice to express all she could not, all she wished she could have been, the rights and the countless wrongs of the life she had been condemned to.

When electricity went back to her whole body, she could not remember; but the pain stayed, as much as the need to tell. The surface of her mind bent in agony, mirroring the tempest going on inside.

Deep down, she wanted someone to know. And the first person to tell, come what may, had to be herself.

As she watched the small human, so stubbornly flowing from her grasp, she finally began to understand — how things go the way they are meant to be, and how the truth always comes to the surface, as smoothly and silently as the glass elevator.

In the sweet singing of the turrets, she felt the echo of the past she so hated, and she realized — no matter how horrible those screams were, that was, and would always be, her voice.

What she had found, in that bizarre journey, was still part of her. Surrendering to it tasted bitter, and yet it felt more natural than anything else.

In some corner of herself she still ignored, the screams slowly calmed down, turning into a true voice. She couldn't help listening for a moment as it conformed to the tune, with a continuity — and a hint of harmony — which was definitely new to her.

It took her a while to stop paying attention. When she focused on the chamber again, it was just lonely and empty. There was silence.

If she had had the chance, she would have breathed.


End file.
